When Management Is Not Only Incompetent, but Also Stabs People in the Back - Anonymous employee OpenBrand Employee Review

2.0
Apr 21, 2020
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The culture is a high point and the environment is open and friendly and there are great relationships to be made with peers. It is a great work-hard environment and everyone is encouraged to collaborate and are held accountable in a way that is conductive and cooperative. I've made many lifelong friends in this environment and am thankful for the relationships that extend beyond the professional sphere as well. You will go far and do fine as long as you "drink the Kool-Aid" as the CEO often says.

Cons

Be warned: Lots of the top brass are two-faced and may say one thing or espouse certain principles and "values," but when it comes to actual professional handling of personnel and company decisions, they all fly out the window. They pride themselves for being competent and for advocating self-help by gurus and the such, but they fail to connect with the people who work for them; lack of awareness and understanding of the issues that actually plague their directs' work. There are department heads who are at the top due to seniority and being "yes" men but are absolutely horrible at managing others or organizing the business at an upper-management level. The fact that management does not listen to new ideas ironically shows their unwillingness to change, not the rest of us under them. Feedback methods and suggestion box lists may be read but management will stubbornly stick to what they feel is best and hide it under the guise of "we ask for people who will go with our decisions." They ask for directs to own their work but criticize them when they start thinking out of the box. Any sort of criticism from the directs instead result in disciplinary action against the supposed "offender." Management will continually hold multiple meetings to handle even the simplest of issues because the OG's need to know every single little detail that goes on in their company and are reluctant to entrust work to those under them. When directs under them see this, they become hesitant to speak up, and thus perpetuates this vicious cycle. The company actually believes they can retain employees by under-valuing them and making up for the value by company perks and benefits. Trying to win employees over with perks does not make up for intentionally paying them under "market value" just saying. Not only that, there is a false pretense that they want us employees to stay "gappers forever"; but the opposite is what happens when they find that they're not reaching their profits margins over retaining someone. There are stories of forced early retirement or demanding an employee switch over to a developer or programming position at the risk of losing his job. There is yet another story of refusing a visa renewal just because a manager does not like the employee (with a hint of subtle racism that can't be proven). When clients cancel services, upper management chooses instead to fire people for "performance" reasons rather than admit truthfully that they need to cut down to save for the profit line. Upper management is absolutely dishonest and duplicitous in these employment dealings when the company supposedly upholds trust as one of their pillar "values." Diversity is going down the drain as the last couple of people on the chopping block were of different ethnicities; the entire company at this point is effectively whitewashed with just a few token employees of other ethnicities. It's quite apparent that as a company that prides itself for "intelligence" the product and business model is quite simple, easy to reproduce by any other business division, and the actual people at the top who run the business are anything but intelligent. They hold highly to their five values of "trust, ownership, willingness, passion, and professionalism" and fail at all five of them.

OpenBrand Response
6y
Thank you for sharing. We are sorry that you had a number of grievances upon leaving us. As a values-led company, it is important for our employees to not only share our core values, but to live them every day. Our goal is to have team members who are excited to be a part of our circle of safety, thrive in our culture, and see themselves as a change agent for their own growth. Not everyone thrives in our values-led culture and it’s not a fault of either the person nor the company - it is simply not a match. We know that you will thrive in an environment that better aligns with your values as we will continue to thrive in ours. We wish you nothing but success in your future endeavors. Be well.

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